I admire Miles Davis, i admire Stravinsky; but i loved Chet Baker and Scriabin...You?
What we listen to we cannot trace always a border between cold or cool admiration and heart wrenching love at first sight....
I admire Bach without limit but i love also him dearly....Here admiration and love are one....
The first time li listen to Chet Baker i was not even sure if it was a great trumpetist, but i love him without knowing why....
More i listen to Miles Davis more i admire him but i still wait for love to come....I like it a lot but it is not love and i know the first time i listen to him why he is a great trumpetist, unlike Chet, his mastering of the instrument was evident.... For Chet i listen not the trumpet but the voice of his instrument, i even forgot he was playing the trumpet and the question if he was great was secondary....Miles was great without any doubts.... But i am in love with Chet because he touch my heart.....
Sometimes the frontier between these 2 are less clear, i admire Brahms but i like him more than i love him.... Bruckner i admire him like a new Bach and i love him like our old grandpa with a feeling that will never end....
I admire Monteverdi at the level of my admiration for Bach, but i like him only , it is not this passionnate love that changes my heart and life like with those i love...
I love Bill Evans dearly but i admire Keith Jarrett greatly but without any passion....
I admire and love Vivaldi at the same times.....
I admire Telemann, Haendel, Haydn more than i love them..... I am in love with Purcell tough and Josquin Desprez.....
I admire Hildegard the Bingen and i love her without words.... I am in love with the organ composer Pachelbel but i only admire Palestrina....
I admire Arvo Part very much, but am i in love? No....Excep perhaps for one or 2 of his work: Alina for example....I admire and love Gorecki symphony of tears but not much the rest....Only respect for the rest of his works....
I admire Arrau, Horowitz, many pianists but am i in love? No, but i am in total love with Ervin Nyiregyházi , Ivan Moravec, or Sofronitsky....
I admire the composer Sorabji almost like Bach but dont feel any love at all....Deep fascination and admiration for a genius that never speak from the heart to the heart, only from his brain to my brain.... But what a genius !
I admire many, many, female singers, but i am in love with only a few, i love Billie Holiday, Marianne Anderson for example....
I will not go on with my list any longer...
But what speak to our heart and what speak to our brain is not the same and sometimes some music speak for us to the 2 part of ourselves...
But one thing must me clear, i dont want to live without the great musicians whom i only admire. I like them like interesting friends, even if i am not changed by love at first sight with them, swimming in the sea of adoration....
What are those you admire but only like ? What are those you clearly are in love with?
When the brain speak first and always, it is admiration and friendship not love.... In love there is a mystery in with we participate and which transform our life....
Those who we admire gives us pleasure.... Those who we love gives us not only that but an ultimate meaning that go to your heart.....
Listening music is learning to listen into the many levels in us where music can reach and transform us.... Each music or musician has this potential to change us at a level or at another one, or at all levels simultaneously....But for sure it is different for each of us......
I apologize if my OP makes no sense for some.... I hope my question will make sense for some....
Magister whitout the "h" is a latin word meaning teacher or mentor...
I advised university students about books for 35 years, i was not the one who classified the books on shelves, but the one who help them to discover ideas in new books or old one ....
I miss my job because each day i was waiting to partake ideas with students in all fields....Listen to them and if i can motivate them to read classical or unorthodox books....I was reading in my job waiting for a student to come...
I usually advised chemistry student to write poetry, and advise poet to study number theory and music....To give you the gist of the matter... But sometimes i motivated number student with the beauty of prime numbers or p-adic one and the young poet with an unknown poetical genius of my own liking... 😊
Here in audio forums i advise people to stop upgrading their gear, listeningto it with a set of listening experiments instead and then learn all along the way how to embed rightfully their audio system mechanically electrically and acoustically before thowing money...
I speak also too much, it is a remnant of my job, but my wife said of my passionate character also....
I was in Germany when Christa Ludwig was at her prime and she was, beyond doubt , #1 with the German nation .My best friends sister was an excellent trained singer, leader in a great Choir in Berlin’s Catholic Cathedral.I told her once she sounded like Ludwig , she gave me a dirty look and said "Bist du verruckt " aka Are you Crazy .
I was in Germany when Christa Ludwig was at her prime and she was, beyond doubt , #1 with the German nation .My best friends sister was an excellent trained singer, leader in a great Choir in Berlin’s Catholic Cathedral.I told her once she sounded like Ludwig , she gave me a dirty look and said "Bist du verruckt " aka Are you Crazy .
Magnificent story thanks.... 😊 I was in love with Ludwig after hearing his Mahler lieder and Bach....
You were a lucky fellow, i never had a singer for friend....😪
When I taught in Vermont I guided best students to McGill . Which was also my grandmothers birth name . I’m guessing you were part of the Universite de Montreal ?
This is one of the very best American musicians telling it like is .
McGill is indeed one of the best; and also one of the most fearless musicians I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing and working with. This is not always the case, even as concerns the best. Some of the things that orchestral players are sometimes required to do can instill fear in any (wo)man. Anthony is always absolutely unperturbed.....or so it always seems. True story:
While eulogizing a departed well known musician, a colleague related a story that the dear departed colleague told him. Asked how he remained so composed in the face of such incredibly difficult passages in a new work being premiered, he remarked: “Only my launderer knows the truth”.
**** Their music come ONLY from their brains, almost never from heart or soul... ****
Since as you yourself stated we are “friends”, I will take this liberty: Be careful with that assumption. That assumption presumes that we are privy to that composer’s soul. Possible, I suppose; but, unlikely. It may not resonate with OUR heart and soul, but it may very well be an open window into THEIR heart and soul; especially when we are talking about undeniable greatness of a kind.
It is a conversation between friends and when we judge someone or something that say more about ourself than about the people or the work judged indeed...
My thread is a way to express but also to know ourself...
This is the reason why i speak about loving someone or some works and liking someone or some works...
I never use the word "hating"....
All composers create from their heart and soul and brain and spirit and body... Our access to their world is never mind mediated by our own heart soul and brain body and spirit history...
Judging between friends exchanging our experiences is a way to learn about ourself first and last and about others impressions to confront ourself also... Not a way to condemn some composers and some works....
Then your caution are appropriate but refusing our own judgement is refusing to know our own limitations or our own intuitions because they operate a choice that eliminate some and not some others...These choices are inevitable...
I never condemned Stravinsky, i only like him, i admire him greatly....I love Scriabin... But if i sense that the Stravinsky music come more from the brain, others in the contrary could say the opposite that the Stravinsky Sacred Spring for example come from the visceral body experience and Scriabin music comes from his brain disconnected from his body in an astral realm...All these contradictions define each one of us and are reconciled in the greater History of the soul....All judgements, even contrary to one another are right because they are all limited to some perspective that speak about our own origin in the journey...
No one is right...All are right... This is not a contradiction, this is all convergent but distinct travels...
Judging, evaluating has values like many stops on a road that is our personal and collective histories encounters....
In 30 seconds you can see McGill is at ease in his skin . Every person on earth has good days and bad ones even if you can’t see it.Most composers are people .Wagner was the exception .
mahgister, Been listening to my CBC apt and flinching with Quebec at 5300 gone .Almost exactly what have here in MN with almost 3 million population less . NB has 750 K , I know my old Camp Gage Province only boards a small piece of Quebec but only 9 gone ?
I can guess what is going on in Quebec but would like to hear from someone actually there.The National isn't much help.
As I think about this subject I don’t believe I have a dichotomy between love and admire. I may love some composers more than others, but I don’t just admire (which I believe is almost like damning with faint praise) any of them. To me, I love and admire to various extents. Then there are those composers or artists I neither love nor admire.
To me nothing is sacred, but the Greats are called that for a reason as somehow they've stood the test of time, not to say some recent faves won't. My tastes are too varied to even mention here but jazz and classical (mostly jazz) still make up the bulk of what intentionally hits my earballs... although this was the year (or was it last year?) for Benjamin Britton, highly recommended.
Gramophone had a 150 known composers , young and old, to name the 3 composers they like best poll about a year ago. To my surprise and joy , over half of the younger named Janacek. Things are looking up a bit.
One of his little heard pieces but a good one {as always ) Wolf . . If memory serves he was in US when WWII started and he was told to stay there. But he was too much an Englishman for that . This was written in 1941 so my guess was its about the American Military Force to come .
Romania produce Celibidache ! One of the most original maestro ....
Greatest romanian thinker and poet is Lucian Blaga a completely original philosopher....And a poet of the first order... He also has written great theater pieces... It is a shame that a genius so interesting was almost unknown in the Europeean philosophy circle and litterature.... That speak volume....
I read 2 times his main philosophy works....😁 His metaphysic is the most tragic metaphysic ever written in all european history and the most original one hands down.... Ceaucescu torture him at the end of his life and veto all the publication of his books in the last ten years of his life...
It is only one name in the list of my 10 romanian heroes...
Got a great second last night,. Joshua Bell was doing an average interview , well the jet-setter is doing over 200 hundred a year, what do you expect .All of a sudden he stood up lighted like a Christmas tree and started a machine-gun tirade of one audience that is FAR, FAR away from any other in the world .Same one I’ve been telling people for 15 years, The Hungarian in Budapest !!More like a rock concert than a Classical Concert.Teens bring scores , 200 Hungarians louder than a Rolling Stones concert in Madison Square Garden( well maybe many just as much )
No wonder Adam Fisher is such a great conductor . Been on virtual meth for decades .
An american journalist was asking to the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard why there are so many geniuses in mathematics and physics coming from Hungary to the US... This was at some times after the Manhattan project...
Szilard answered: "Which geniuses? There is only one genius from Hungary it is Janos Von Neumann".
That says a lot about Hungarian soul...And after the long list of Hungarian genius in america, that says a lot about Von Neumann...
For me the greatest pianist i ever heard in my life is a Hungarian...He towered so high that it is unbelievable...
Compare this version with Horowitz and Richter for example...The tempo of the Hungarian god is very slow but is more intense and explosive than the other 2 giants...The emotional flow is so powerful that it is impossible to not enter in a transe listening it...Try it...
The volcanic power of the lava flows break all walls and any other pianist sound like first class prize pupils practicing ...
This amazing pianist was considered Liszt reincarnated when very young and a book was written about him by a greal psychologist in Holland when the boy has 13 years of age...The book was about transcendental musical genius among children...
He live unrecognized in America except for the first 15years, after that without any imporesario, poor, and witout any ressources he dive in misery, near prostitutes, composing his own works all day without a piano for himself most of his life...
He make no public appearance for 35 years except at 74 years, when his 10th wife, sicked by cancer he was in need of money to cure her...
The journalist making an interview with him in the cardboard pocket of this vinyl ask him why there is no piano in his appartment; he answered " no garagist keep their tools in their house"...He does not need a piano and NEVER practice...
For those of you who may think that i have exagerated a bit about his playing listen to this, written in the US by Shoenberg, the great composer for which any pianist is mainly only a tool for his genius, in a letter to the young Maestro Klemperer in Germany:
...a pianist who appears to be something really quite extraordinary. I had to overcome great resistance in order to go at all, for the description I’d heard from Dr. Hoffmann and from Maurice Zam had made me very skeptical. But I must say that I have never heard such a pianist before...First, he does not play at all in the style you and I strive for. And just as I did not judge him on that basis, I imagine that when you hear him, you too will be compelled to ignore all matters of principle, and probably will end up doing just as I did. For your principles would not be the proper standard to apply. What he plays is expression in the older sense of the word, nothing else; but such power of expression I have never heard before. You will disagree with his tempis as much as I did. You will also note that he often seems to give primacy to sharp contrasts at the expense of form, the latter appearing to get lost. I say appearing to; for then, in its own way, his music surprisingly regains its form, makes sense, establishes its own boundaries. The sound he brings out of the piano is unheard of, or at least I have never heard anything like it. He himself seems not to know how he produces these novel and quite incredible sounds – although he appears to be a man of intelligence and not just some flaccid dreamer. And such fullness of tone, achieved without ever becoming rough, I have never before encountered. For me, and probably for you too, it’s really too much fullness, but as a whole it displays incredible novelty and persuasiveness. And above all he’s only [sc. 33 years] old, so he’s still got several stages of development before him, from which one may expect great things, given his point of departure... it is amazing what he plays and how he plays it. One never senses that it is difficult, that it is technique – no, it is simply a power of the will, capable of soaring over all imaginable difficulties in the realization of an idea. – You see, I’m waxing almost poetic.[9] Wiki
«We also have the testimony of Arnold Schoenberg. Arnold Schoenberg was not a man to suffer fools greatly. Nevertheless, the letter in which he wrote to Klemperer, Schoenberg lavishes praise on this pianist just about unlike any musician he had before encountered. Schoenberg’s own students were sometimes victims of their master’s caustic comments. He did not bestow praise lightly on anyone. However, he seems to be absolutely captivated by Nyiregyházi and his playing.» part of an article on the net....
To finish my post about this pianist i will give you this anecdote:
Earl Wild was a first class extraordinary pianist... It is easy to verify with his career spanning almost a century, his playing is so powerful technically and musically, probably no one with a great name never ever could impress him so to make him doubt of himself... With reason, Earl Wild is anything except a second grade pianist , it is one among the giants...
But what is happening, what happened when a giant encounter, by luck or fate, a god?
An american journalist asked Earl Wild after a public concert what do you think of the playing of this unknown Hungarian genius which just recorded a disc for the first time since 30 or 40 years... Earl Wild answered about the playing of the Hungarian, was one short word: " baloney"...
Think a second how the giant pianist was feeling about himself compared to the unknown god; for the first time in his life probably he was listening to something he cannot emulate or mimic not even rival and never surpass even in dream.... It is not unlike the jealousy and anger of Salieri toward Mozart in the great epic scene of this great but fictitious film "Amadeus"....
If you want to verify compare his playing on youtube with anyone.... At worst and it is rare he seems on par with some giant for some piece, most of the times the god in healthy form crush giants like children... No one except the extraterrestrial octopus musical virtuoso Simon Barrere rival him, and perhaps in Scriabin only tough, not in Liszt, the 3 russian gods, Sofronitsky and Heinrich Neuhaus with Scriabin himself and very very few others rival him...
At first i was not able to choose...For the first listening...
Well tempered Klavier of Bach by Andras Schiff...
And the rival version of Vladimir Feltsman...
Schiff is perfect really....
But when you listen something one time, it is like making love with an unknown beautiful woman , the sex may be great...For sometime...
But love manifest itself only with the time passing...And love making can erase itself with time even with the more perfect woman... And with an imperfect but loved one love making can increase with time...
All those who review 2 musical recorded performance rarely listen to the cd 1000 times... I had listen to some cd 1000 times...Yes not 100 but 1000...Not many but....Love is impossible to control...
Then at first the perfect playing of the Hungarian Schiff is without any defect at all...
After that i listen to Felstman the Russian school of piano is in my heart for sure...
No more perfection here, only a singing above perfection, a perspective that sometimes pertain to the sacred but from the heart not the brain like Schiff...
Understand me please, i like Schiff without reservation, i will listen to him time to time...he also give the sacred mystery but not with the powerful immersion that give Feltsman...
i love Feltsman and i know that i would be able to listen to him without end...With time to time Schiff for my background listening...I love Bach so much that i swim in it without listening sometimes....
My favorite Goldberg are with Feltsman.... Irresistible live at Moscow when the wall was broken and with his return to free Russia... An event ....He plays with freedom an interpretation completely without comparison... He even add something to Bach.... This is difficult for anybody....He succeed....
Dont judge too hastilay....I am reliable in any work not military one...
I never even have a boss in my life....Then imagine an officer giving me an order?
More than that i cannot endure more than 2 persons or 4 around me....
The last time i go to a cinema was 30 years ago...I almost never go to restaurant. ... I walk instead of taking the bus....I never accept to live in a house with any neighbours.... I run away from any collective festivities and i hate travel if not solitary or with only one traveller....
Then keep the flake or the march order.....😊
The only one voluntary for a war in my family was my young father, alone and without family which was not accepted because he was too young and too short.... I dont retained his qualities...Alas!
The next war with Canada will play above my tombstone.... They will never need or miss me....
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
